The Best American Poetry

"Possum" [by Mitch Sisskind]

Possum

At night occasionally a possum
Passes by peering in the window.
It represents my sexuality. Prehistoric,
Very slow moving, and the children
Would be repulsed by it were
They awake which they are not.

Over time I begin to wait for it wondering
If it's attracted by the TV room light
Or perhaps by the TV itself --
Who knows? No way to tell
what a possum is thinking or,
I should say, that gift is not given to me.

I watch "Survivor." But the skittish
Marsupial now owns my waking thoughts
And later, brazenly, my dreams:
I climb a tall tree with it, we read
Comic books together: Donald Duck,
Scrooge McDuck, Daffy Duck, all the rest.

-- Mitch Sisskind

Ernst Herbeck [by Sharon Mesmer]

Here's Gary Sullivan's Ernst Herbeck site.

Gary says, "Responses to these translations encouraged, especially from anyone who reads German."

That previous poem was totally uncalled-for ...

My apologies.  Here's a much nicer one ...

When The Moon Turned Away

I looked at the moon, and the moon turned away.
I looked at the moon on the water,
and the water turned away.
At least it should have been the moon, or the water,
but those shapes on the water were just the landmasses of Asia,
turning away.
I looked below me and the grasses looked up afraid
in a sick green light
at the moon which had turned away.
The moon was too small anyway, to give much light.
Maybe it was sorry for hitting me that time.
Maybe it was sorry that I turned away.
Maybe it never saw the pain that made me turn away.
I was a moon once, too.
A singing moon.
A bright smiling moon with a baby truth.
A white see-saw baby bouncing up and down.
Look up, all of you.
Come on look up because I am still the moon
and beautiful
in the rear view mirror,
like a woman
not salt-bound, not sad,
not a ghost caught crying.
At least not that.

-- Sharon Mesmer

Any fans of tantric sex out there?? [by Sharon Mesmer]

When Tantric Sex Gets Ugly

I'm not sure what "tantric sex" means
but I think a finger goes up your butt. 

“Tantric sex” seems to be reserved for people
who went on vacation for a week
at a Medieval Times restaurant
in Sedona, AZ,
with a large dwarf named Bruno.
In other words,
the redheaded stepchildren
of the fly kingdom.

When I get angry, it’s ugly.
When Gurdjieff gets angry,
it’s “tantric sex.”
At least that’s what P. Diddy told me.
I might consider tantric sex with Sting,
or any guy who’s lovin’ himself
more than he’s lovin’ me. 
Yeeeah . . .

Guess what?
I WAS A TANTRIC SEX SLAVE
FOR A SENIOR TIBETAN BUDDHIST MONK
screeching at the Tibetans to GET OUT OF CANADA.
I was 16 and content to be
5'2" of pure Jewish jewishness.
I ended up on an island
surrounded by old perverts
where high priestesses were chanting
while touching themselves
to escape dementia.
That's when I spotted Steven Tyler
with giant white dentures
in half a coma.
I smelled a familiar perfume,
the one my grandmother had worn
to her own funeral.
My fly was undone,
my shirt unbuttoned,
and I was making love
to a barking tiny pony.
His or her name was
Barking Mad Elmo.
He or she was not distracted
by the 4 wheelerchairs going down
on a bunch of American teenagers,
the coolest of whom was
the guy who invented Ctrl-Alt-Delete
who also happens to be
the Fonz. 
Yes, apparently,
the Fonz is back in town, and he's looking for
Tantric sex involving Arthurian legends
involving Spongebob and Gandalf
involving gangsta rap and druidism,
all rolled together in the guise of some
tantric dragon lady with all sorts of spooky
Eastern sex secrets.
I wish him
all the luck.

-- Sharon Mesmer

Monotonizing Existence

"The wise man makes his life monotonous, for then even the tiniest incident becomes imbued with great significance . . . The truly wise man could enjoy the whole spectacle of the world from his armchair; he wouldn't need to talk to anyone or to know how to read, just how to make use of his five sense and a soul innocent of sadness.  One must monotonize existence in order to rid it of monotony.  One must make the everyday so anodyne that the slightest incident proves entertaining.

"Because I am nothing, I can imagine myself to be anything."

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, Serpent's Tail, 1991
Edited by Maria Jose de Lancastre
Translated by Margaret Jull Costa

A Thanksgiving Post (by Laura Orem)

Happy Thanksgiving, BAP readers! Usually, at this point, I'm running around in frantic circles, trying to get ready for the holiday, but this year, I abdicated. I gave Rick a choice: we could either go out to eat, or he could cook dinner. By "cook," I also mean plan, shop for, and prepare without asking me any questions (as in, "Honey, how do you boil potatoes?"). After mulling this over, he gamely agreed to give it a try, and I plan to spend Thursday morning on the sofa in my pajamas, watching the Macy's Parade and "Miracle on 34th Street."

Don't get me wrong - I love the holidays. It's just that they are an awful lot of work. It was a helluva lot easier when my mother did everything. Now I'm the mom, and it's become my job, and frankly, the whole Norman-Rockwell-perfect-turkey-and-trimmings thing is exhausting. So I bailed. And to be honest, I don't feel one bit guilty.

For one thing, instead of panicking when I can't find the gravy boat, this year I can concentrate on actually being thankful. I've got a lot to be thankful for, and it will be nice to be able to take a few moments and reflect on the blessings I've received. Corny, perhaps -- but true. I am thankful (not the least because someone else is cooking).

One of the things I'll be thinking about is the opportunity I've had to join this community of writers, readers, and wonderful poetry lunatics. So, dear cyber-friends, here's a fun Thanksgiving poem about family and abundance. Have a wonderful holiday!

"Sunday Brunch at the Old Country Buffet"

Madison, Wisconsin, 1996

Here is a genial congregation,

well fed and rosy with appetite,

robust children in tow. They have come

and all the generations of them, to be fed,

their old ones too who are eligible now

for a small discount, having lived to a ripe age.

Over the heaped and steaming plates, one by one,

heads bow, eyes close; the blessings are said.

Here there is good will; here peace

on earth, among the leafy greens, among the fruit

of the gardens of America's heartland. Here is abundance,

here is the promised

land of milk and honey, out of which

a flank of the fatted calf, thick still

on its socket and bone, rises like a benediction

over the loaves of bread and the little fishes, belly-up in butter.

 

by Anne Caston. from Flying Out With the Wounded, NYU Press, 1997. 

"It is November in New York" [by Florence Cassen Mayers]

It is November in New York

and so we go in gloves

to vote. We go in droves,

we go overtly

to polling alcoves, 

we vote covertly. 

We are lovers,

ex-lovers, 

booklovers.

We are controversial,

overeager,

we are doves,

extroverts,

 

we are introverts

in handwoven

pullovers,

we are drovers 

in overalls,

we are movers,

 

governors,

we are shovers,

shit shovelers

in overcoat

and overshoes.

We are slovenly,

we are hungover,

we are overweight,

we are overlooked,

we are impoverished,

we are unproven.

We overestimate, 

overspend,

overstep.

We discover 

undercover

coverups,

we overhaul,

we improve,

we overturn government 

approved takeovers.

We vote to overcome, to recover.

-- Florence Cassen Mayers

Auguries [by Sharon Mesmer]

Need answers to life's persistent questions?  Then why not try . . .

Ailuromancy — divination by the behavior of cats
Alectryomancy — divination by chicken
Amnimancy — divination by the membraneous sac of a newborn
Bibliomancy/Rhapsodomancy — divination by turning to a random page in a book
Cledonomancy — divination by chance remarks or events
Copromancy — divination by feces
Crominomancy — divination by the curved patterns inside an onion
Daphnomancy — divination by the crackle of burning laurel leaves
Entomancy — divination by insects
Fractomancy — divination by fractal patterns
Gyromancy — divination by whirling
Haruspexopy — divination by examination of entrails of sheep, swine, oxen
Hippomancy — divination by inspection of horses' hooves
Lunomancy — divination by moonlight on a face dusted with silver
Metoposcopy — divination by reading lines on the forehead
Myomancy — divination by the movements of mice
Nephlomancy — divination by cloud "pictures"
Omphalomancy — divination by belly button
Ophiomancy — divination by the movements of snakes
Stolisomancy — divination by reading people's clothing/style
Tyromancy — divination by coagulation patterns of spoiled cheese
Xenomancy — divination by meetings with strangers
(My favorite: flarfomancy — divination by Google search

"Sans Soleil" [by Chris Marker]

Have you ever actually read the text of "Sans Soleil"?

http://www.markertext.com/sans_soleil.htm

Monday @ KGB: Paul Muldoon & James Richardson

KGB Monday Night Poetry Reading Series

Hosted by Laura Cronk & Michael Quattrone

With original hosts Star Black & David Lehman

Monday, November 10, 2008: Paul Muldoon & James Richardson
7:30 PM
FREE

Hosted by Laura Cronk & Michael Quattrone

With original hosts Star Black & David Lehman

Monday, November 10, 2008: Paul Muldoon & James Richardson
7:30 PM
FREE

"What Men Want" [by James Cummins]

What Men Want

A man wants to move

with cat-like grace

through his life, spill his seed

occasionally, but never

bear responsibility for it;

win the love of his peers

and the veneration

of the older men while

commanding the respect

of the young Turks, too;

then, finally, at the end,

lean a still-powerful forearm

on the frame of a window,

gaze out over the sea

one last time and flick

a glowing cigarette butt

into the garden.

-- James Cummins

Jabbereffy, Turing, Sign-off.

Drawing by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, author of Dear Future Boyfriend.

Take the Turing Test here.

What is Jabberfucky? Go here and fucking find out.

Bookmarked here at your guest blogger's computer: Tony Hoagland's "Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of our Moment."

Some results from my previous call for new-ish literary journals, suggested by our readers:
The Lumberyard, Cave Wall, Bateau, Chatauqua, Caketrain, GUD, Atlas, 1913: A Journal of Forms, and New York Tyrant.

Well, that's it for me this week.  Maybe BAP will have me again.

Thanks to Cristin for giving me artwork and all my interviewees for being good sports. And if you're in New York, maybe I'll see you at the BAP-approved KGB Reading Series with Star Black on Monday, December 1.

Meanwhile, catch me over at my own site here.

And now ... an advertisement

Tonight's Zinc Bar reading features Susie Timmons, Bob Hershon and (ta-da!) me, Sharon Mesmer! at the bar's new location, 82 West Third Street (just off Thompson), formerly the Baggott Inn, formerly the Cinderella Club — where Billie Holiday once sang.  The vaguely Middle Eastern decor is all but gone, but the attitude-fueled bar-wenches remain.  Yay!  The readings are now hosted by Kim Lyons, Joe Elliott and Douglas Rothschild, and $5 will provide you with the opportunity to spend $8 on headachey wine.  And to hear some truly kick-ass poetry.  The ass-kicking begins 'round 7pm-ish, just like before.  Vitamin-load the B complex and drink up!

Inaugurating

Since I'm guest blogging this week, I'll inaugurate what I hope will be a reign of poetic terror with my "inaugural poem."  I saw the contest posted here, wrote the poem, THEN saw that New School Writing Program faculty couldn't enter.  Oh, well; fair enough.  So here it is, with a first line from Laura Cronk's BAP 2008 poem, "Entering," and the requisite words and stanzas . . .

INAUGURATION DAY MOUSE

-- for Laura 

The mice must have these visions:

the founding fathers, their poor eyesight,

the littlest mus musculus escaping the trap

to ultimately become the most recognizable

American icon, after the flag.

Today I personally honor these smallest

of small world contributors, so full of integrity,

faith and hope, ever steadfast in the face

of so many bigger and stinkier heels.

Where the faithful and hopeful mouse goes,

there go I, squeaking Change to Power.

And soon, in some obscure corner,

in the middle of the night, I shall find

some savory, delicious and nutritious

crumb of something, and for once — just once —

it won't snap its breathtaking jaw on my neck.

-- Sharon Mesmer

Judith Hall Presents a Poem by Terrance Hayes

A Small Novel

The protagonist spends the first twenty pages
crossing a bridge wearing nothing but red
swimming trunks and sneakers with no socks.

I can remember standing naked
outside my neighbor’s window at fourteen
when I read the paragraph about the placard of night

held up by pine trees.
Where ever there is a mention of solitude or desire
I think, without wanting to, of Race. Race

when the protagonist spends a page long sentence
trying to work free a knot of shoe string
in his basketball sneaker. Race

when he spends the hot seasons of his twenties
like a beggar with no mouth. Race
when he tells his wife: “There are no Open Houses

on Easter.” Late in the book he feels himself
becoming a shadow. On page 113 just as I reach
the final sentence about traffic like the sound of wind

like the sound of water, a horn yelps somewhere.
“It was all he’d ever known of rivers…”
I pencil L.H. in the margin. I think, without wanting to,

That they will find this book someday
and turn its muddy bosom all golden in the sunset.
On its blank last page I write the poem

“The Blue Langston” which begins:
“O Blood of the River songs, O songs of the River of Blood,”
and ends: “There was nothing I could do about Race.”

-- Terrance Hayes

from The Antioch Review, Winter 2004, v. 62, no.
and Wind in a Box (Penguin, 2006)

_________________

Note by Judith Hall

         The poem amalgamates so elegantly the fictive and the lyric; and by “elegant,” I mean, etymologically, legible and then graceful.  It clearly, gracefully shows the act of reading as a defining act -- one capable of altering despondency into a poem about despondency.
          Hayes’ tone here is not entirely unlike Mark Strand’s comic angst in “Chekhov: A Sestina” -- another poem wherein a character contemplates what a characteristic act might be in both an unsympathetic world and a contestable form.
          Langston Hughes, though, is the key predecessor, the Hughes of The Big Sea (1940) and The Weary Blues (1926) and the Hughes who wrote, “The mood of the Blues is almost always despondency, but when they are sung people laugh.”  Let a young man’s “novel” leave the hard laughs to elders, if it shines by despondency alone. Yes?

The Year Brooklyn Won the World Series

The official 1955 team photo of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Top row, fifth from the left is Gil Hodges (#14) and fourth from the right, Duke Snider (#4) standing next to World Series hero Johnny Podres. Top row, extreme right Jackie Robinson. Second row, fifth from the left, looks suspiciously like rookie Sandy Koufax. Can you spot Walter Alston, Pee Wee Reese, and Roy Campanella in the front row, and Carl Furillo in the middle?

Po-Postcard from Rome [by Moira Egan]

Jorie Graham reading at the Centro Studi Americani last week.  Of course, we English-language-starved expat poets are delighted when poets like Jorie come to read in Rome.  But at Italian poetry events, be prepared for at least 45 minutes of critical discussion from various experts and professors who will explain to you what an important poet he/she is, and his/her place in the American canon, and and and -- and then the poet gets to read 6 or 7 poems if you are lucky.  Agh.  But I was very happy to hear her read "San Sepolcro" and a few other favorites.  

November 22, 1963

The day that Kennedy was killed
    Was the day before the Stuyvesant-Clinton football game.
    There was a rally in the auditorium
    And our coach who was from Texas or Oklahoma said slowly, carefully,
    “There isn’t a horse that can’t be bucked.”

    Meanwhile half the school was marching along
            Fifteenth Street to Union Square and then up to
            Forty Second Street and Fifth Avenue and some got up to
            Fifty Ninth, and they were parading,
            Yelling, “De Witt eats shit” until they were stopped by policemen.
                  I didn’t go.  I stayed in school.
                  That day I almost got into a fight
                  With a fellow twice my size on the stairway
                  And he laughed at me.  A friend of mine broke it up.

    In English the head of the Physics Department walked
    Into the room.  He said, “I think you are old enough
    To understand this.  The President was shot today in Texas.”
            I stand up.  I do not understand.  I say, “What”
            And I think, the President was shocked today in Texas.
            He leaves the room.  I am sorry.

    I leave early. The Clinton game is called off,
            And the series has since been discontinued.
    My French teacher is waiting for me.  Smiling shuffling his legs
            Touching his teeth with his tongue looking at me
            He says, “There is a rumor that Kennedy was shot.
            Do you know anything about that?”

    A week later I go to my cousin’s bar mitzvah
            Out in Long Island, and I bring a catalog with me
            From the Bernard Baruch School of City College.
                        I want to be a stockbroker.
    It is windy outside and we walk a mile or more
            To get to the bar mitzvah
    And as I walk I talk to my mother
    And I think carefully of what I am to say
    And I narrow my eyes.
    It is a cold and windy three days after Thanksgiving
    And I point my thumb to my stomach and chest
    And I brush my scarf against my face
    And I say, “I too want to become President.”

-- David Lehman
from "The Presidential Years" [in The Paris Review, #43, Summer 1968]

Get Your Orality On.

Drawing by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, author of Working Class Represent.

-- Get On The Griot Trail with Bob Holman and Papa Susso in West Africa. Mr. Holman is traveling around Africa with his griot pal Susso to film endangered languages.

-- While you are getting your orality on, check out the online Walter J. Ong Collection at Saint Louis University.

-- Play this clip of Lowell Fulson at full volume and get your grind on something.

-- I'll admit it:I have every version of Ron Mann's 1982 documentary Poetry in Motion: VHS, CD-ROM, DVD, LaserDisk.  Get this clip on, by the collective sound poetry group The Four Horsemen, remains a favorite.  (It's out of sync, I know.)

-- Get your Poetry magazine on with its November issue, with a Visual Poetry Today section edited by Schenectady resident Geof Huth.

-- I'd be remiss not to get my self-promotion on and link to this post of group sound poems composed by my students last Spring at The College of Saint Rose.

Significant Mother (by Joy Katz)

A regular column on poetry and motherhood

Part Three: Robert Hass, Significant Father

I have always admired Robert Hass for the women in his poems. They are more beautiful for their midlife repose and lined faces and undimmed by frank humanness, even while clipping their nails. Now I find myself recalling every instance of his children in his poems. There aren't many. Hass doesn't write poems about fatherhood in the way that, say, Rachel Zucker or Sylvia Plath or Muriel Rukeyser (in the remarkable "Nine Poems for the Unborn Child") write about motherhood. In fact he doesn't write about fatherhood. Children are one of the many weights in his poems tying language and ideas to earth, landscape, home. Yet those lines come back to me again and again when I'm with the baby.

The opening of "On the Coast Near Sausalito," the first poem in his first book, Field Guide, makes me laugh:

I won't say much for the sea
except that it was, almost,
the color of sour milk.

Almost the color of sour milk? I'd always liked that image but never quite got it. It turns out Hass wrote the poem as a graduate student at the University of Buffalo, when his kids were babies. I didn't put it all together until one morning at 6 a.m. recently as I was dumping out a bottle of milk. Suddenly I understood it—the color of that sky! But also Hass inventing the metaphor as he emptied a bottle into a sink somewhere in Buffalo, where my mother, coincidentally, was rinsing out my own bottles at roughly the same time.

In "Songs to Survive the Summer" (from Praise):

...the gray-eyed child

who said to my child: "Let's play
in my yard. It's O.K.,
my mother's dead.

This bit of overheard conversation feels exactly right to me. It's neither sweet nor grave, despite the subject matter. It captures the seriousness of children at play (people often think children laugh when they play; that's mostly not the case). There's also the idea of permission, the strongest force in a child's life. And the sweet/sad release that comes after a parent dies, when it's neither possible nor necessary anymore to ask "is it O.K. if...?" I remember when I felt that freedom for the first time, some months after my mother died. Hass makes me see that that understanding is not exclusively the province of adults. 

In "Late Spring," from Human Wishes:

...and after dark in the first cool hours, your children sleep so heavily in their beds exhausted from play, it is a pleasure to watch them.

This is a long, dreamy prose poem about a time of year and a neighborhood. I first read it in my late 20s, when I had no thought yet of children. I had a sense-memory of how heavy my own limbs were after I'd played all day with my cousins. Now, when I carry my son upstairs at the end of the day, I can feel the labor of his play. And it turns out that the largest part of being a parent is just watching. 

There's an excellent exchange between a mother and a teenage daughter in "Tahoe in August." You'll have to look that one up yourself. (The mother in the poem is probably Sharon Olds, with whom Hass teaches during the summer at Squaw Valley.)